What do the methods for the AuthenticationConsumer class return?

Hello,

I plan to subclass AuthenticationConsumer() to adapt OSQA for my authentication needs. I will be implementing a SAML2 flow that leverages a federated identity provider (IdP) and treats OSQA as an application running inside of a SAML2 service provider (SP). I will be using the Shibboleth implementation of a SP.

Attributes about the user (eduPersonPrincipalName, givenName, sn, email) will be asserted by the IdP and made available in the Apache/Django environment by the Shibboleth SP (just as REMOTE_USER is made available).

The openidauth and facebookauth modules are useful examples but it would also be quite helpful if someone could detail what the return values should be for the methods

• prepare_authentication_request()
• process_authentication_request()
• get_user_data()

It would also be helpful to understand what the flow is as the user goes through the authentication process, specifically where would be the best place in the flow to test for and create if necessary new OSQA users (I plan to do that following one of the many LDAP examples I have read about here).